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Safety with vintage equipment.
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post Thu, 24 Sep 2020 - 22:03
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I service and repair vintage audio and hifi systems. A lot of it uses valves (vacuum tubes) and high voltages (between 250 and 600 volts). Some of it also dates from the 1930's to the 1960's before transistors became the norm.

When I service these items, there are a number of parts mainly capacitors that are replaced on sight, because if you dont, the result could be major failure or even a failure.

People often contact me saying the record player doesn't work but the other parts do and will not accept a quote to service everything to make it safe.

So my question: What would happen if on attending the unit, I just serviced the record player, but nothing else on the customers instructions and some time later, there was a serious failure which caused a fire or even a fatality.

Would I be liable even if got the customer to sign a disclaimer?

As far as I can see the only way round it, was if the customer removed the faulty part, the record player section, brought or sent that to me for servicing and then re-installed it themselves.

Any opinions please.
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post Thu, 24 Sep 2020 - 22:03
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southpaw82
post Mon, 28 Sep 2020 - 14:13
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QUOTE (mickR @ Mon, 28 Sep 2020 - 13:11) *
1. Would a disclaimer disolve liability above a professional duty of care in a potential life threatening situation?


Maybe.

QUOTE
3. I offered my opinion on that but can offer no authority however i woukd like to see authority when my contention has been successfully challened.

That would require such a situation to have been litigated - which seems unlikely given the legal difficulties it faces.


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Any comments made do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon. No lawyer/client relationship should be assumed nor should any duty of care be owed.
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andy_foster
post Mon, 28 Sep 2020 - 18:39
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QUOTE (stamfordman @ Mon, 28 Sep 2020 - 14:43) *
Is there a duty to inform a customer that the equipment is in a dangerous state?


There would be a moral duty to do so. There would also be a compelling business case for doing so - not so much from potentially selling more work, but from the damage it would do to the business' reputation if equipment was returned in a dangerous condition and caused a fire, etc., and inferences that might be drawn in any subsequent litigation.

Any person owes a duty of care to his 'neighbour', not to injure him through his actions (generally positive actions), and we don not have the general legal duty to help that the French do, but motorists (for example) have a positive duty to (take reasonable steps to) avoid collisions even if they otherwise caused solely by the mistakes of the soon to be injured party.

Whilst there is (AFAIK) no positive duty of care to inform your neighbour of dangers you have not caused and are not responsible for, I would consider that the obligation to carry out a repair with reasonable care and skill ought to include notifying the customer of any dangerous issues with the appliance which would be known to the repairer but outside the scope of the contract.

To answer your question as best I can, IMHO it is likely that there is such a legal duty. However, I am not aware of any authority directly on the point, and suspect that if such an authority were known to those posting in this thread, it would largely be an authority for the OP's question.

I would however, add that as the OP has already informed the customer about the state of the equipment, this question has no direct relevance to this thread (other than that an authoritative answer to this would probably be an authoritative answer to the main question).


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andy_foster
post Mon, 28 Sep 2020 - 19:10
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QUOTE (mickR @ Sat, 26 Sep 2020 - 19:17) *
To be honest..Nope, its a bit of speculative supposition... but neither Andy nor yourself SP have sited any thing that would suggest my opinion has no legs either. cool.gif


Only authority I can think of on a lack of a strict liability to stop people injuring themselves through their own stupidity, was a case concerning (IIRC) a hotel with a swimming pool or lake in its grounds which was clearly visible. A guest who knew it was there deliberately went for a swim in the middle of the night (IIRC somewhat tired and emotional) and drowned. The family/estate of the deceased tried to sue on the grounds that there was some spurious strict duty to prevent guests from knowingly doing things which resulted in causing harm to themselves. There wasn't.

Can't remember the name of the case, but the vague description might jog someone's memory.


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